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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Hello readers, friends and followers from far and wide.

This year I'm hosting a Crazy Quilt Along 2014. Its going to be an awesome fun time as I teach Basic Crazy Quilting for a group of quilters who signed up in early December of last year. I was slightly surprised by the immediate response of interested quilters.

I have begun a 2015 waiting list, so leave me comment if you want to be involved with 2015.

Crazy Quilting is not a process that I plan out, get busy on the sewing machine and have my quilt done in a few days!

My Purple Crazy Quilt took me several years to complete. Now that is not constant work on the same quilt. I get carpel tunnel syndrome if I don't pay attention to varying my activities. You may too, if you don't take care of your fingers, hands and wrists.

Machine embroidery enthusiasts might love to make crazy quilts on an embroidery machine. Like this rose I did with an embroidery machine on teh Smithers 2013 Centennial Quilt. But for me, its simply not an option to do any machine embroidery on my crazy quilts. So its your choice.

I prefer the work of hands and fingers and free design work with a needle and thread. That's my choice.

Our year of working together will be one of learning and sharing.

I will be emailing all the participants who made it plain they wanted to be included in my CQA2014. They followed my Rules of Engagement and are eagerly gathering supplies to make their first crazy quilt.

I'm working along on several projects and you will soon see what we are working on and check out our progress.

Monday, December 30, 2013

What? You must have a Smitty in your house, he's the little mischievous invisible little bugger who comes along, like clockwork, just when you think you have yourself organized?

This time he's in the form of a new computer.

Well, its really about transferring everything from a Mac to the new PC. These two manufacuturers really have to form a better relationship for consumers, really!

I am bravely trying to post my first post on my blog since the surprise new computer for Christmas! I wanted to show you the late 2013 gift made for a friend of mine. But alas, I'm am not finding photosabout the process of building this "Burgundy Beauty" am I, no, I'm wondering around inside the world of PC's with different Microsoft versions.

Now if I was posting about crows on the other hand, this one is also a beauty! But not the Burgundy Beauty?

So there, you have it, I'm on a NEW learning curve of mastering the use of our new PC and posting great content for my readers. Please be patient, I will learn the curve as soon as possible. In the meantime, here's a computer photo of me, giggling about how much a a curve this is for my brain, obsessed with quilting and blogging about it.

OK, now this is not a nerve wracking process or anything, just a change, so I'm grooving along with "Its What I Like About You" by the Romantics on ITunes!

Its great therapy to drain my brain, change my brain, make a change in mindset and change keeps me young!

I have a list of songs on ITunes called Mix Energy Rock, 157 songs, 9 hours and 52 minutes of excellent listening and they are all different artists and this is the kind of wild and crazy music I listen to, to focus and learn.

Wow, my teachers would have sent me to the office without hesitation for suggesting such a thing to do for learning if I was back in highschool!

Thanks so much to the dozens of new followers and to the faithful followers who started out with me so long ago, its cool to have an audience. Thanks to our oldest son Jon for this great gift and I'm so grateful to have a safe, warm place to live. I'm blessed!

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

I had a Christmas present arrive early and its a new computer, new windows and Photoshop!!

This is my first post using my new computer system courtesy of our oldest son, who so kindly made this possible and now I'm playing around trying to find all my stuff. So this collection is not complete, maybe next year I'll show a complete photo montage of all my Christmas quilts.

This Christmas message is meant to be short and sweet!

So Merriest times at your Christmas and all the very best for the new year! See you again in 2014.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Which you'll just love and you can carry on to make dozens of funky and wild quilts from full size bed size to tiny minis too! More on those another time.

These are where you end up in about 2 hrs of your time. Its a Christmas Puzzle!

I decided on the size that ALL blocks would become the same size. 15 1/2 inches sq to be exact.

And there you have it, 5 blocks from 5 FQ.

Ok, so were do we go now with these, up next is the finished table runner! Yes, it turned out totally lovely and its on its way to a friend for Christmas who has this enormous dining table, this runner was 85 inches long, it has a lovely snowy fabric border and machine quilting.I forgot to get a photo, you know how it goes, you're running around finding wrapping paper and just the right size of box and then its wrapped and done. Onto parcel #2 etc. until this small mountain of prepared parcels for Canada Post to deliver before Christmas! Then I got up this morning and plugged in the Christmas lights in our living room.I had such a warm moment of Christmas just seeing this photo!So, breath now as I sip my coffee with Bailieys and I have been listening the great online radio channels that I totally recommend "Jango Radio"I've been listening to the channel of "Diva Christmas" and wow, I'm bopping and swagging around home to this channel wow, its sooooo good.I thought you'd enjoy seeing my tiny livingroom decorated with our Christmas Tree in place, right beside my comfy chair and footstool.

and of course, my 2014 Christmas Crazy Quilt in progress. Sorry it blurred up but if you stick around till next Christmas you'll see this one and more!Cheers my online friends and Merry Christmas!Carli

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

So pleasant to sit down and read my first email that I had one two lovely patterns over at Geta's Studio!

I've been really intrigued with her patterns and wanted to try something, but I thought, "Darn, I'm not buying anything new until my challenge is over on June 30th, 2014. So delayed and then she had a giveaway posted and I entered myself with my gmail address in the post as I'm a no-reply blogger.

I fell in love with this pouch purse and so its my first choice of two patterns that I could pick for free!

Friday, December 13, 2013

Almost every year, at Christmas time, my hubby always makes a batch of "Almond Roca home made style." Its not like the purchased stuff. Its much better.I only have the before photos because I took them before I went for a trip into Smithers and when I came home it was all wrapped up and hidden.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

So , you all know that my life is filled with quilts and recently I decided that I'd return to knitting, but so far that has been a disaster. So I picked up my crochet hook and made a touque if you are Canadian and its a warm winter hat if you are not.

I faux cabled the outside of the touque! Such fun and fast to make.

My able bodied head wanted to pretend that she was in a movie!

I just love it and its so warm, if I can get a minute for my hubby to take a photo of me wearing it I'll post it too!.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

OK, now some of you may feel that buying things at the thrift store are not for you and that's OK.

If you are one of the CQA2014 participants, this blog posting is "a must read."I think that if you want to get really motivated to improve your crazy quilting skills, you may just find awesome buys for a $1 or less for a huge zip lock bag with all sorts of stuff in it. Sewing and quilting stuff, that is!

Lace, laces, buttons, bits and pieces from clothing, zippers are just some of what you already know of, its just really good to have confirmation of fact. Really, girl, I've got my hands on my hips and I'm wagging a finger at you!We all 'must' start re-purposing fabrics from clothing and related items made from fabric more often. I have read 'The World in 2050" by Laurence C. Smith and I can see the changes we all must make and I have begun making my changes!

If you are interested in making crazy quilts or you are signed up for my Crazy Quilt Along 2014, then collecting little shit is something that I recommend you do. The little shit is the little stuff that gets on your nerves sometimes when it comes tumbling out of every thrift store I see. The bags of this and that represent at least several visits to garage sales, thrift shops, flea markets, you name it, I have collected stuff.

Very little new fabric in the photo above.

The wool blends in this long suffering primitive rug that I'm hooking. Its wool purchased at thrift shops or freeway shops at some landfill sites.

A few years ago I participated in International Quilter Swaps online, I added the black and brown 'Drunkards Path' blocks on the last border.It was all re-purposed from clothing.Heh ladies, it just makes economic sense to reuse and re-purpose, doesn't it? Think about this, it takes loads of fuel to manufacture common items we use in North America everyday. If those items are then thrown away in a landfill, ALL of the loads of fuel for manufacturing, transporting to your purchase is ALL LOST fuel that we'll never get back again. That fuel is just gone, forever. Even you already buy the odd thing that has had a previous life in the hands of a stranger, its clean and lovely to re-purpose into one quilt. Its helping in such an insignificant way, that I think most of us just give up and buy new. Its so easy to reuse, re-purpose and recycle along to someone else, I don't see any excuse why our governments don't make it feasible to do MORE reusing.

Maybe its the distance from plastics and other processing places that makes me re-purpose more so than most quilters I know. Locals might think, "Oh ya, Carli, we know you got it at the local mall" And I say this to you. So what?I will continue to recycle, reuse and re-purpose fabrics of all kinds into quilts.Leave me a comment telling me how you reuse or re-purpose and we'll all see how many of us are actually re-purposing fabric?Carli

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Crazy stitching is really only a space in your head where you decide how you interpret the stitching along seams whether this is done by hand or machine. Check out the meandering zig zag stitch from my Janome or my Baby Lock machine to top stitch the strips over the sweater 5 inch squares. Its a crazy made quilt for sure. Crazy Quilts are very personal, they are your expression. Crazy quilts in my opinion are not meant to be done with the traditional format we've seen in dozens of examples.

In this blue crazy quilt for a baby is a good example of a crazy quilt made modern.Just as these following examples are.

Remember all of my projects between January 2014 and June 30 will be done without buying any new fabric. Its such a freeing process to simply use what you have!Join us and make the commitment to not buy any new fabric for 6 months!

This is the swirley method (below) I used in the making of Sir Alfred Smithers that went into the Smither 2013 Centennial Quilt

Now these Dresden blocks below are about to change radically.

This is the first block I made after deciding this the block for my new King size quilt that will be used for summer on our bed. We've had the same bed frame for 29 years. I have some of the little pieces stashed in a cookie tin.

This is a long drawn out wool piece ( below) that was an experiment and I started about 10 yrs ago!

These poor little rail blocks were my way of getting myself back into the "real world of quilting ealier this year after the completion of the "Smithers 2013 Centennial Quilt" I made for the Town of Smithers.

This little posie patch is a pattern from one of the Quilt Mania patterns. When I finish this one, the full credits for the designer will be posted. I have some interesting border ideas for this little one.

This is a faceless "Me" and it was started a few years ago when I worked in a daycare with after school kids. They loved this and I don't know if they ever finsihed it. But I will finish it.

This rooster is special one, the inspiration was out roudy rooster who was VERY interested in our lovely hens, but he was a little too roudy and they began to loose feathers on their backs!

This is my Modern Orangey Quilt. Its almost ready for quilting.

This is a really lovely quilt that I've drafted a great border for and it will take most of this next year to finish.It was part of a round robin quilt with a group of local ladies.

This is a bit of quandry for me, I'm not big on the colors and I've going to have to change the focus of the existing borders. I'm not liking it right now!

This is almost done and it may become the latest Christmas quilt. Surprise heh? No Christmas colors yet? Readers may remember it as A Dresden Summer (below)

This one is my old Canadian Girl quilt (below) that I was playing around with, but as yet unfinished.

So as you can see, I've got a bunch to finish using only fabric from my stash. And don't forget, I'm going to be listing all the fabrics on another page here on this blog.

Stay tuned thanks for dropping by! If you are paying attention, I've not listed any of the Crazy Quilts to be finished on this list, there is a reason for that which you'll see as time goes on. Join us in our destashing event?